


I Told You So

by DatSonyat



Series: Old Dogs, New Tricks [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Very Weird Desolas Lives AU, Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, Companionable Snark, Established Friendship, Gen, Humor, Implied Reaper Body Horror, Rated M because of Zaeed's mouth, Swearing, the author can't write action scenes for the life of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 14:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DatSonyat/pseuds/DatSonyat
Summary: Two bounty hunters engage in some friendly banter before combat, or: An attempt at tracking Vido down fails, but that's never stopped Zaeed before.Desolas from wreaking havoc even less so.





	I Told You So

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sick, I'm tired, but these fellas causing chaos wanted out of my head so here's the first installment of the weirdest AU I have ever written and likely ever will write. Everything I write is self-indulgent af, so if this level of strange isn't your thing, click on through to the other side. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The low thrum of whirring insects reverberated through the disgustingly humid air, offset by a faint clanging of metal and far-off, unintelligible orders.

“Son of a bitch,” Zaeed snarled beneath his breath, glaring down the scope at the meandering Blue Suns half-assing their way through simple shipment checks. Lazy bastards, and no sign of Vido—the exact opposite of the now piss-poor contract he’d negotiated.

Bad info, of course it had to be. _Again._ Someone’s kneecaps were _done_ once he got the hell off the backwater planet they’d been directed to, to _start_.

Sweat dripped from Zaeed’s brow and he adjusted his sniper rifle, seething and muttering low curses all the while. No way in hell was he using one of his good helmets for this planetside shit, not when Desolas’s first plan of action was constant and consistent spacing.

Guy had a weird fetish for airlocks or something, but that was neither here nor there, much like the man himself.

The annoying-as-fuck, carefree humming sounding off from _both_ his comm channel and directly behind him didn’t help matters. Fuming yet in no way willing to turn around to verbally nuke the idiot from orbit, Zaeed asked, “Havin’ a nice time back there, yeah?”

Leaning back on a steaming boulder with a foot braced against it, shoulders lax and arms sprawled out with his crest craned upwards as he drank in the sun, Desolas hardly needed to answer. He patted the sun-warmed stone, basking in its heat through his hardsuit regardless.

His mandibles flared in a self-satisfied grin and he laughed, deep and slow, sub-vocals thick with smugness that bordered on a bestial predacious Zaeed had puzzled out years before.

“Why, yes, yes I am. Your concern is _so_ touching,” Desolas drawled, gleefully ignoring the absolute frustration and resigned rage in his partner’s clipped tone. “You know,” he continued, savage derision dripping from his voice, snorting at Zaeed’s emphatic _fuck off_. “We could even retire here—“ sheer mockery gave way to a lower pitch and rapidfire speech, as if narrating a horrible medical ad's fineprint “—Reaper doomsday notwithstanding.”

Desolas’s fingers drummed against the rock in rhythmic clicks as he supressed cackles when Zaeed painstakingly pulled himself away from his scope to stare at him with a disbelieving fury that rivalled the fiercest supernova.

Maybe the Big Bang itself, but amnesiac and a plethora of other Reaper-related issues or not, he remained committed to a lifetime of sarcastic prickhood dosed liberally with giving the one human who’d forever put up with him as much hell as possible.

“You,” Zaeed stabbed an accusatory finger in his direction, eliciting a wider grin and raising of combative brow plates— _the fucker **would** be enjoying this_—“are a goddamned dick, and I don’t know _how_ you still surprise me. Asshole.”

“Aw," Desolas crooned, tutting, "would it make you feel better if I went into the whole ‘useless human’ thing? I can definitely do that.” He titled his head down and to the side, the gesture coy. One mandible flickered in a knowing smirk, cybernetic eyes and neural implants glowing a lightning blue.

Zaeed groaned, face twisting into an unimpressed expression as he rolled his eyes. _This again._ God, it was never gonna end and he damn well knew it. He held up his hand, ticking off fingers as he stated in ultimate annoyance, “Not a cop, not gay, and not falling for that shit, old boy. You gonna help me kill Vido or not? Y’need me to say it? Or—”

He paused, glowering through narrowed eyes. _The nerve,_ not that Desolas hadn’t earned it at this point in their lives. And honestly, his stupid nicknames had started the whole mess—

“Eyes forward, Massani.” Desolas flicked a talon at the mercs standing in a neat, hilariously stupid line, wandering attention span caught between witnessing imminent death and/or pressing more of the pale blue of his faceplates against the rock’s soothing warmth. “Dome the one on the right,” he goaded, eyes brightening and sub-vocals dropping into full apex predator mode, something other turians flinched or cowered at the second the overwhelming threat registered.

Daily life for Zaeed, really, and hell if that kind of… _enthusiasm_ wasn’t contagious, the glorious, murderous bastard.

Sure as shit, Vido could lay claim to the Blue Suns for his drastically numbered days, but he didn’t have a pissed-off, hell-bent on vengeance, genetically altered powerhouse of a turian hybrid who took the meaning of loyalty to a wild level on his side.

 _Nothing_ was going to save the back-stabbing traitor from the rain of hellfire he intended to bring down like the wrath of god, shitty intel and giant, megalomaniacal space squids be damned.

Ha, Zaeed could work with this just fine.

“Tell you what,” he said, settling back into his perch, lining up the shot with practiced ease, “you take the left, blow the fuck outta the fuel canisters…” Zaeed couldn’t help the cruel chuckle that followed, channelling his anger into what they could do to Vido’s operations today.

“Well, well, are we finally done sulking? And here I thought I’d be able to sunbathe all day.” Desolas vaulted to his feet, standing proper and striding to the leafy foliage Zaeed was using as cover, every eager step calculated and nearly silent. His eyes darted back and forth amongst their targets, calculations firing into overdrive as he reached for his shotgun.

Zaeed raised an eyebrow and scoffed, dismissing the acidic insults that came with their odd friendship. “Yeah, yeah, you’re real cute. Take the piss, why don’t ya. Why Bryson bothers with you is one of the galaxy's greatest mysteries,” he remarked, more to himself than Desolas, finger settling over the trigger. Old boy feels like it’s his god-given right to terrify one of the few whitecoats capable of helping him? If he wanted to set himself up on a date with a handful of freaky, psychedelic discoballs, that was on him. “We _are_ getting paid to blow this place, right?” He let the rhetorical question hang, waiting for the vicious inevitable. 

“We certainly are,” Desolas rumbled, sub-vocals alight with dark amusement as waves of pulsating biotics and the scent of eezo flooded into the oversized, rich green flora. Before he confirmed their usual, he twitched, mandibles briefly fluttering and eyes breaking from the Blue Suns back to the prone human, like he always did when he forgot something or remembered a train of previously lost thought.

“What?” Zaeed didn’t move from his position, didn’t twitch, didn’t look up. Didn’t need to.

Desolas huffed an unhappy sound, loosing one of his stranger, less turian growls of dissent. “Don’t insult me.” The glow of his biotics grew stronger and the energy surged from his form and danced in helixes around him. “I’ve said it since day one, Zaeed: _You_ pulled me out of that filthy Reaper-tech hellsite, whether you intended it or not. Vido Santiago is a dead man walking as far as I’m concerned.”

The icy hate in Desolas’s voice would’ve halted any normal person, turian or not… but Zaeed was anything but normal, hadn’t been normal for ages, and he knew better than anyone when to push and when to pull back when it came to his partner’s tempestuous and mercurial moodswings.

“Heh, gotta keep you on your toes, don’t I?” A slow smirk of his own warped the deep scars curving about his face, eyes never leaving his target. “See, now I’ve gone and hurt your feelings. Figure we’re even.” He waggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated parody of what Desolas had done not five minutes ago.

Nothing but a concussion or maybe instant death was going to wipe the shit-eating grin from his face, and they both knew it.

Better yet, they both knew Desolas wasn’t anywhere near stupid enough to enact any manner of silly violence on Zaeed when he had his finger poised so nicely over the trigger.

“On your mark,” Zaeed said in good humour with a barely perceptible nod of his head. “I drop when your ass is in the clear.”

Desolas warbled a quiet, displeased exhale that sounded anything but turian and suspiciously like, “Ugh, worthless human pissant,” and disappeared over the edge of the craggy perch in a swirl of black, blue, and gold without a sound—

Zaeed gave it a second, flexed his finger and let the trigger slide home with a, “Hell yeah!” as the round shattered the merc’s skull in a brutal shower of familiar red gore.

—and like a several megaton biotic bomb, went charging into the disorganized, screaming mess of Blue Suns, shotgun blazing and biotics detonating and laughing like a maniacal madman.

"Hey, _hey_ , Zaeed!" Desolas shouted over the pained shrieks and gunfire, arm swinging forward in a childish Shockwave mnemonic he'd never been able to explain or train himself out of. A sharp curve of his wrist converged the massive blue waves and detonated in an explosion of metal shrapnel and biotic energy, shredding the mercs caught in the blast to little more than multi-coloured pulp.

Zaeed effortlessly dropped two of them without so much as blinking, holding back that it was in fact 100% unnecessary to yell over comms for the umpteenth time, but shit, why not leave the Biotic Hurricane to his happiness and such. "Hey your damn self, got the one on your—"

"No," he returned, his simplistic but deadly cheer unchanging as Zaeed ceased fire in time with his next charge, a clean bullet nailing the next merc attempting to come from behind between the eyes while Desolas's charge impacted with force enough that the dipshit with the shoddy rocket launcher snapped in half, either paralyzed or dead— _definitely_ dead after the shotgun blast to the head— _oh_ , he wasn't about to actually—

Desolas's evil laughter crackled over their comm channel, "Remember when I said 'only an idiot would believe—'"

Nope, nope, nope, old boy wasn't getting this one. _Screw **that**._

"Only an idiot would believe Vido'd be here, yeah, cheers you fuckin'—"

Heedless of his proximity to the highly flammable and explosive fuel canisters, Desolas neglected to bother with his SMG and dumped his clip into them, uncaring of the remaining few outside of Zaeed's field of view, untouchable as he was against their inferior weaponry with his absurd kinetic and biotic barriers. Re-slotting his shotgun in one smooth motion and sweeping a foot out and around to give himself momentum, Desolas's arms moved with him, their fluid, decisive raise erecting a solid barrier as he locked eyes with Zaeed through his scope, eyes glimmering with a friendly malice only he could pull off, mandibles splaying in the cockiest of genuine smiles.

"I _told_ you so," and the fuel erupted in an inferno of super-heated orange and blinding white, following Desolas's well-played theatre.

Secure in the knowledge that nothing could kill him, or rather that Desolas refused to die, and satisfied as the rest of them burned and charred, Zaeed leapt from his sniper's nest, swapping his sniper for his assault rifle with an irritated sigh and a shake of his head.

 _I told you so,_ and for fuck's sake, he _had_.

**Author's Note:**

> This batshit insane AU has been going on for over five years now, mostly because Evolution portraying TIM as a hero and Desolas as a villain was total garbage and I spite-write... I finally found some courage to write an intro of it out. _What the hell is this even, what have I created??_ Egh, really hope they're not too OOC even with the AU in effect, and why, why did I attempt to write this in Third Person Omniscient. Oof. 
> 
> For anyone that's legit interested in where I might take this, it's very much a Nihlus Lives AU. 👀 Will I ever write a linear fic of this oddity? Who knows. Not looking forward to all the research I'm gonna need to put in so it's less obvious I don't know jack about weapons/military/anything remotely related to those subjects outside the game, RIP. :')


End file.
